VT MÄK is expanding its portfolio with M&S sales to the civil aviation community.
 
Group Editor Marty Kauchak provides details.   
 
While VT MÄK continues to deliver M&S toolkits to military services around the world and prime defense industry contractors, the company is increasing its portfolio with sales of these products to the civil aviation sector. VT MÄK’s interoperability, visualization, simulation, and terrain  enabling products are finding favor with this community to support synthetic environment-based systems integration, experimentation, and other parts of a program’s or product’s acquisition life cycle.  
 
SE2020 IDQ and Other Opportunities
 
Pete Swan, VT MÄK’s spokesperson for civil aviation programs, pointed out the company is responding to business opportunities in air traffic management (ATM) and air traffic control programs. “What we’re finding is that many air traffic training control systems that are being delivered are end-closed training applications. They are not really suitable for the kinds of research and development and concept experimentation that the FAA and their contractors are looking for as they try to develop the next generation air traffic management systems.” The government-industry teams’ M&S requirements to deliver next generation ATM systems through the FAA Systems Engineering 2020 (SE2020) IDIQ include  using open, distributed simulation and visualization environments that model the whole of the U.S. national air space system. Swan continued, “This is where we see our tools playing a fairly significant role in air traffic management – to help them design and validate systems that will become part of the next-generation air traffic management systems.” 
 
VT MÄK’s early SE2020 IDIQ customers include the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center. The facility has purchased a VR-The World server as a source of streaming data for Tech Center experiments. VR-The World was demonstrated for CATand MS&T, its sister publication, when it was made available to the market in the fall of 2010.   
 
VR-Vantage, MÄK’s visualization line of applications and tools, is also used at the FAA Tech Center. It creates 2-D and 3-D representations of the airspace from the big picture (overhead view) down to ground operations at an individual airport. 
 
The advantage of MÄK’s visualization products includes providing “the flexibility to do everything,” Swan noted.  “These products give you the flexibility to go from a world view right down to a control tower view and then jump into the cockpit of an aircraft that is flying in the simulation. It’s a whole new opportunity for the customers to visualize the simulations and visualize the effects of the new systems,” he explained. 
 
As the SE2020 IDQ effort gathers steam, industry teams have a requirement to network their simulations and other virtual content. To help meet interoperability requirements, MÄK’s Run Time Infra-structure (MÄK RTI) is already in use as a core part of the Aviation-SimNet federation object model. In one instance, the FAA and NASA Langley have chosen the MÄK RTI to network together their ATM simulations.    
 
In the simulation arena, the company offers its VR-Forces simulation scenario generator. The product simulates specific models for non-commercial aviation entities such as UASs, emergency aircraft, rogue aircraft, people on the ground, ground vehicles, and other scenario players.
 
One of many other emerging requirements that MÄK expects to support with its simulation products is the introduction of UASs into the civil air environment. “There is a lot of work and experimentation going on to study how military and civil UASs can actually perform and participate in the whole civil aviation environment – this work deals with how to track them, how to monitor them, how to avoid collisions in the commercial airspace, and how to control them,” Swan concluded.